Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Doesn’t everyone need a beach bag with images of vintage Cape Cod postcards to start the summer? Through June 5, all of the items with my artwork available fromSociety 6come with free worldwide shipping if you use this link.

Recently I have been working on a
series of quick, small studies for future work.Small acrylic landscapes that are all 4”x4’ each.What to do with them one I am done?I realized if I made them a bit bigger, say
4”x6” I could then give the studies another purpose.Now they are also mail art, and today 10
Point Reyes Postcards are in the outgoing mail.

Monday, May 30, 2016

As May comes to a close, it is time to sort through the
latest arrivals of mail art that have been waiting for me my P.O. Box.Some of the recent highlights include:

I can’t read Chinese, but I think Sagerush Moderne’s latest
piece includes a medical chart.

Suus in Mokum’s
latest mail art awesomeness arrived the other day.I like how it even compliments the Imaginary
Landscape series I have been working.

A new piece of environmental awareness mail art came from
Karen Lindquist in New Mexico.The one
is about WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot
Plant) near Carlsbad where nuclear waste is being dumped underground.There have been leaks.

E. Coles latest piece arrived in another handmade hexagonal
envelope with what looks like the map of planet we are yet to visit.

The scan of Hilal Tursoluk’s latest piece from Istanbul
doesn’t show off the metallic paint added to the image.It is even better in person.

Fleur Helsingor’s
new piece documented her robot making adventure after a trip to the San Jose
Museum of art.

After responding to a mail art call, Eberhard Janke sent a
zine with even more for me to do.As busy
as I am, I always can squeeze in another art project.

Finally Nico
van Hoorn has sent mail art announcing he will no longer send mail
art.

I can understand how that could happen, it can get a little
overwhelming (and expensive) keeping up with mail art.As I am heading to a period of intense work
for my solo show in October, I expect I will inevitably get behind on
responding as well in the coming months.I’ll be sorry to no longer receive mail art from Nico, but I just may
send him something now and then anyway.

Friday, May 27, 2016

On Wednesdays I usually head down to Civic Center to the
farmers’ market.On the way I stop at
the Steps
of the Library Sale.The Friends of
the SFPL sell off unwanted books that are one step away from the recycling
bin.Everything costs one dollar.Some weeks I leave empty handed, some weeks I
find a book I want to read and I often find tattered, old books that will be
used in my own art
projects.This week’s find was a
book of ready to use postcards from the 1980s called The San Francisco Postcard Book.

From 1987, shortly before I arrived myself, the now vintage
book is a nice time capsule of 80’s graphics art with photography that captures
a familiar but much-changed San Francisco in 24 removable postcards.I found nothing online about the book or the
art group behind it, A.R.E. (Artist Revolutionaries in the Eighties).Of the 12 participating artists I found two
have current websites (some other names matched, but I am not certain if they
are the ones in the book).Check out the
work of Jo Babcock and Patrick Turner (I particular
like his photo postcard of the old Eastern Span of the Bay Bridge).

It is tempting to remove the postcards and start mailing
them out – but for now, I am just going to hang onto this piece of 1980s art
and keep it in my own personal library.I
got it all for $1.

Friday, May 6, 2016

The latest round of mail art to arrive is a reminder that
this is a global adventure with mail coming from close by, just over the hill
in Noe Valley to all the way from South Africa.With additional mail from Québec, British Columbia, Germany, the
Netherlands, Turkey and Hungary.As a
twelve year old, I had a few pen pals, but it really has all come full circle
for me.Here are some of the latest
pieces:

Thursday, May 5, 2016

Another series of small (4”x4”), quick studies inspired by
my recent trip to New Mexico includes places like Pecos National Historic Park and the
ruins in Jemez.Now it’s time to work on some bigger
paintings…

About Me

I am an artist living in San Francisco. I work primarily in mixed media, collage and landscape painting. My work has included maps, postcard-themed art and mail art projects. In 2013 I began a series called Collagescapes where I start painting paper with areas of color representing the palette of a specific place. Next I cut the paper into hundreds of small pieces, randomize the pieces and then reassemble them in various geometric patterns. Collagescapes are both landscape paintings and collages. They appear abstract but retain the color palette of the places they represent.
My new series is Time Travel Photos — handmade photo collages showing places in San Francisco where I have cut and sliced present-day photographs and interwoven photos of nature representing how the City looked before Europeans arrived. Each is an image of an urban space with the natural past emerging through. For example, creeks once again run through the Mission and dunes reappear in Golden Gate Park and tidal flats fill the Embarcadero.
My work has shown in over 40 venues, primarily in California but also in other locations in the United States and abroad. My artwork can be viewed at tofuart.com